dita maturity model

8/14/2019 DITA Maturity Model

1/20DITA Maturity Model White Pape

DITA Maturity ModelBy Michael Priestley, IBM and Amber Swope, JustSystems

A J U S T S Y S T E M S W H I T E P A P E R



The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an open standard from OASIS1

creating, managing, and publishing modular content. It supports the definition of n

content types within a comprehensive content ecosystem, and has been increasinadopted across a wide range of content disciplines and industries.

DITA overview

You will better understand how DITA can support your organization and how it can scale to meet your enterprise co

needs by first understanding the basics of DITA standardization.

DITA topics and maps

DITA is a modular, structured, XML framework based on topic-oriented content. This means that content develo

author units of content, called topics, which can then be assembled into deliverables, such as books and Web pa

Typically, each topic covers a specific subject with a singular intent, for example, a conceptual topic that prov

a system overview, or a procedural topic that tells readers how to accomplish a task.

In addition to chunking information into small units, DITA structures content by type. By default, DITA provides a

type, topic, and several more specialized types: task, concept, reference, and glossary entry. Each type has a spe

structure that defines the valid elements that can exist within that type. For example, DITA does not allow you to c

a element in a concept topic because steps are parts of procedures and thus belong in task topics.

You can organize topics into collections using a DITA map, which can then be used to generate a Portable Docum

Format (PDF) file, Web site, or other information application. Maps can reference topics and other maps. Bec

the same topics and maps can be reused in many different collections and deliverables, DITA enables a pow

reuse architecture that can scale from simple Web pages or newsletters up to complex inter-related librari

information centers.

DITA specialization

No one set of content types could meet the needs of every organization or even of a given organization as it gr

For this reason, DITA supports the creation of new content types and collection types as required. Specialized t

can exist at many different levels: for example, a relatively generic type such as reference might be specialized

a particular subject area, such as semiconductor design, or for a particular companys needs, or for a product

within a company.

Specialized types can inherit associated behaviors from their more generic ancestors, so even new DITA content t

can be included in standard publishing streams, although it is common to extend processing to take advantag

some of the new markup. For example, a new content type for policy analysis might introduce sections for risks ve

rewards, and processing could be extended to automatically create subheadings for the new section types.

DITA support

DITA is an open-source standard approved and supported by OASIS. Participating OASIS members, drawn from a

vendor and broad user communities, work together on the DITA Technical Committee to evolve the DITA specificatio

In addition to vendor-specific implementations of the standard, the DITA Open Toolkit2 provides open-source proce

support for the specification. As DITA matures, more companies and organizations are participating on the Tech

Committee and its subcommittees, contributing functionality to the Open Toolkit, and contributing specialization

the community.

1 Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards www.oasis-open.org

2 http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/



Because of the benefits of XML in general, such as the separation of content from format, and of DITA in partic

DITA is becoming a popular information model in todays global, multi-channel environment.

Maturity Model investment/return summaryOne of DITAs most attractive features is its support for incremental adoption: you can adopt DITA quickly and

using a subset of its capabilities, and then add investment over time as your content strategy evolves and exp

However, this incremental continuum has also resulted in confusion, as communities at different stages of ado

claim radically different numbers for cost of migration and return on investment.

The DITA Maturity Model addresses this confusion by dividing DITA adoption into six levels, each with its own req

investment and associated return on investment. You can assess your own capabilities and goals relative to the m

and choose the appropriate initial adoption level for your needs and schedule.

Figure 1. DITA Maturity Model

The DITA Maturity Model: investment/return summary

Level 1: Topics achieve simple single-sourcingby migrating current XML content sources.

Level 2: Scalable reuse achieve flexible reuseby architecting content using DITA topics and maps.

Level 3: Specialization and customization achieve quality and consistencyby expanding DITA architecture to

content model, which explicitly defines the content types required to meet different author and audience need

specifies how to meet those needs using structured, typed content.

Level 4: Automation and integration achieve speed and efficiencyby leveraging investments in semantics

automation of key processes, and unify the semantics across different specializations or authoring disciplines.

Level 5: Semantics on demand achieve dynamic personalizationas DITA is adopted as a cross-applica

cross-silo solution that shares a common semantic currency for content authoring and management needs.

Level 6: Universal semantic ecosystem achieve universal knowledge managementwith a new kind of sem

ecosystem that can move with content across old boundaries, wrap unstructured content, and provide vali

integration with semi-structured content and managed data sources.

Because of the benefits of

ML in general, such as

he separation of content

rom format, and ofDITA in particular, DITA

s becoming a popular

nformation model in

odays global, multi-

hannel environment.



Level 1: Topics

At its most basic level, DITA is an XML document markup language; but even at its simplest level, DITA enforces a

structure and reuse architecture that allows DITA documents to reuse content from other, more structured projects

standardization also sets the stage for topic-level reuse by others as an initial migration of document-oriented co

evolves to incorporate better management and authoring practices around topics and maps.

Scenario

An author for a government agency may need to produce audience-specific versions of a government policy. The a

can write all the content in one file and apply conditional processing values to produce different versions of the poli

permanent and contract employees.

Investment

The minimum DITA adoption requires that you migrate the current sources of content in XML. You do, however,

the flexibility to decide which sources to migrate when, and how much structure to apply to the migrated content.

teams have a large amount of legacy information that was authored in a variety of sources. Some teams may choo

migrate only the content that will require updates in the future. Other teams migrate everything, but do not mov

content into typed topics; instead they move the content en masse into generic topics, which are the least restr

topic type and hence require the least amount of content restructuring. However, the generic topic type also pro

the least amount of semantic value.

Figure 2. Topics

Another way that teams save time at this level is to defer splitting the content into discrete topics and simply rec

their existing document-focused structure by nesting multiple topics within a single file. For example, recreating cha

as DITA files allows you to continue to store all the chapter content in a single file. While this strategy takes less time

restructuring the content into units based on subject, it does not provide small enough units of information to e

easy reorganization of the content into multiple deliverables.

Because XML separates the formatting from the content, the transform for each deliverable type applies the style

formatting defined in the cascading style sheets (CSS) when you generate or publish the deliverable. Although the

Open Toolkit provides default processing for multiple deliverable types, you must customize the transforms to gen

deliverables that meet the style, standard, and branding requirements for your organization.



Return

Even with minimal investment, you can realize returns from adopting DITA. Many teams make the move to DITA to

gain greater reuse of their content. Working with their current source, they use conditional processing to generate

multiple versions of the same document. Even with non-typed topics or multiple topics in the same file, you can

easily specify conditions and generate conditional output with DITA. This remains the primary means for reusing

content at the first level of adoption.

However, to make progress toward the goal of additional reuse, you can use DITA to meet the challenge of

publishing new or multiple deliverables that contain the same information by single-sourcing the content. The DITA

Open Toolkit provides default output processing for a wide variety of popular formats, including HTML files, Eclipse3

plug-ins, PDFs, and CHM (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help) files. You can easily generate the same information in

multiple formats by specifying a different output type when you publish.

When you publish content, the publishing transform applies the specified formatting to each element, which

allows you to easily update format styles for large quantities of information. For example, if the style for highlighting

the first instance of a term is italics, but later is changed to bold, you simply update the CSS and regenerate the

deliverables. This is much more efficient than searching for and updating each instance of a term or style elemen

across the information set.

For links between content, most teams use hard-coded cross-references in their current source. At the basic DITA-

adoption level, you can continue this practice and link between DITA topics, as well as to external documents or

locations, such as Web sites.

Lastly, at this level, most teams utilize minimal or unmanaged metadata and primarily focus on terms, such as

index terms.

By migrating the content source to XML and chunking it according to the appropriate topic type, the first level of

adoption supports conditionally generating output and positions you for greater reuse and output flexibility at the

next level.

DITA features used

This adoption level uses the following DITA features:

Nested DITA topics

DITA provides the ability to nest topics hierarchically within a single XML file. You can chunk the content by topic

type, but you dont have to create separate files.

Cross-reference elements

You can create cross-references to elements, such as linking to other topics, to non-DITA files, to Web pages or to

specific sections referenced from within a bulleted list. These references are hard-coded into the content, which

may have implications when you reuse the content.

Conditional processing

You must define the processing attribute and its valid values in the .ditaval file in order to conditionally process

content. By default, DITA provides three processing values, but you can create additional values by specializing the

props attribute.

3 http://www.eclipse.org



Level 2: Scalable reuse

Topic-oriented authoring creates reusable content organized around an audiences primary unit of use, the safes

most scalable reuse strategy for most modular content. The same topics can be reused, reassembled, and reorga

for different media and for different variations on a subject, such as documentation for product variants, by

DITA maps to encode higher-level structure, such as chapters or even Web pages, outside the topics that ma

a deliverable.

Scenario

A small technical publications team for a mobile phone vendor can organize the same content differently to optimiz

user experience for a book versus a Web site. They can use the bookmap specialization to provide book-specific i

such as a cover page, notices page, and appendices, and another DITA map for the HTML output that does not re

these items. They can also generate embedded online help from the same content for display directly on the phone

The following figure shows the same topics appearing in multiple maps.

Figure 3. Multiple maps using same topics

Investment

The major activities at this level are to break the content down into topics that are stored as individual files, and th

use DITA maps to collect and organize the content for output as specific deliverables. This effort requires that you c

an information architecture that includes the following information:

Lowest level of reuse, which may be at the phrase, element, topic, or map level.

Strategy for content reuse, which identifies the mechanisms for reuse at each level.

Metadata, which can be used for both build-time and run-time filtering if it is standardized and properly manage

User access paths, which specify how users access content and then navigate through deliverables using

between topics.

The ability to reuse content in a scalable manner depends upon knowing what you have, how it fits together, and

you need to do with it.



Return

At this second level of adoption, you realize the value of flexible reuse by using DITA maps to assemble each delive

Because each map is specific to a deliverable, you can optimize the content to include the organization of the co

and the links between the topics for each deliverable type.

DITA maps provide a way to abstract the relationships between topics that result in links from the topics and to s

the relationships within the map. This ability is crucial for reuse. You cannot reuse a topic in multiple component

has a hard-coded link to another topic that might not be included in every component. When you specify compo

specific relationships in the maps rather than including links in topics, you are free to use the topic in any compo

where the content applies without fear of broken links.

In the following figure, Map 1 and Map 2 reference specific topics in a repository to generate multiple deliverable out

Figure 4. Multiple maps using the same topics



Another way that DITA maps help you reuse information is by grouping sets of topics into units that can be fu

organized into components and easily included in multiple outputs. Consider the mobile phone technical public

team tasked with creating documentation for various phone models, each with different combinations of featur

the corresponding content for each feature set is organized by DITA maps, the technical team can quickly generaappropriate documentation for each phone by assembling the feature set maps using a phone-specific map. In this

the organization can tailor its documentation to specific end-user groups and thus increase customer satisfaction a

those groups.

In addition to organizing topics into maps and applying conditional processing at the element, topic, and map le

DITA provides a mechanism to reference content from one topic to another. With the conref attribute, you can refe

content with a unique ID into another topic. The benefit is that you can maintain a single source of the truth

topic and display that content in multiple places. Additionally, content updates performed at this single source w

automatically reflected throughout all information outputs the next time you generate the topic. This mechan

particularly useful for managing common content, such as legally approved notes or acronym lists, and for mainta

variable content, such as product names that require global updates across the content set.

In the case of the mobile phone technical publications team, instead of hard-coding a phone model name intcontent, they can create a reference to the model name and conditionally process the reference to automatically in

the appropriate name for each phone model.

However, you must have a strategy for tracking and communicating when information is referenced, updated

generated. Without a strategy to handle this communication, there is a great risk of negatively impacting co

accuracy and quality by inadvertently changing content.

Although you can reuse content with DITA in many ways while storing the content on a file system or in a source c

system, you can only reuse content that you can find. This means that you must provide a way, through proce

technology, for content authors to find and reuse information. Like a source control system, a content manage

system (CMS) maintains content integrity and supports content versioning; however, it also optimizes content ret

through managed metadata and provides workflow management. In addition, a CMS can quickly identify where co

is reused and help you avoid unintentional propagation of changes throughout the content set.

When you organize topics into deliverables by using maps, you can easily control the content for deliverables

generate custom output without impacting the content in the topics. In addition, you can reduce redundant author

reusing content at the element, topic, or map level.

DITA features used


DITA maps

You create DITA maps to generate various deliverables. The DITA map serves three purposes:

Manifest for the deliverable: all topics that contain content to appear in the deliverable must be listed in the map

Hierarchy for the deliverable: the TOC or hierarchy for the deliverable is determined by the nesting of the t

in the map.

Defined relationships between topics: the non-hierarchical links between topics can be specified in the map, w

allows the topics to be used for different deliverables.

Content references

DITA provides a reuse mechanism through the conref attribute, which allows you to reuse elements with a unique

various locations either within the same topic or another topic, as long as the source and target are the same ele

type. One consideration is that many content management systems only support references to entire files, s

content source must be saved as a separate file.



Level 3: Specialization and customization

With specialization, DITA can provide structural support for information typing strategies, improving auth

consistency and guiding quality improvements. Specialization can also model content more closely for parti

subjects or types of deliverable, which can be leveraged by semantic search and customized processes.

Scenario

An insurance company team wants to author all their content in XML to take advantage of the conditional proce

and multi-channel output. They create a domain specialization, as well as structural specializations for claims

policies and procedures in order to handle the insurance-specific concepts. With all the content sourced in XML

can automate their system to combine policy and procedure information with actual claim information to create ju

time compound documents.

Investment

In this third level of adoption, you expand the information architecture to be a full content model, which explicitly de

the different types of content required to meet different author and audience needs, and specifies how to meet

needs using structured, typed content.

Organizations that use DITA benefit from the ability to specialize or evolve the standard to provide the structure

semantic control needed for their content model. They can create their own specialization or participate on the

Technical Committee and work with others to create industry or content-specific specializations. DITA specializa

require resources, time, and expertise, but provide content structure standardization.

In addition to creating new structural standards, organizations may choose to customize transforms to pr

customized output deliverables, such as training materials or data sheets.

In an industry where several companies work together and exchange content, it makes more sense to de

a common specialization that structures the content to meet industry-specific requirements than for a single organiz

to develop a specialization that applies only to their content. The benefits of working on a common specialization ar

you can easily incorporate and re-brand content as well as share the resource burden for specialization development

Return

By investing in a content model that differentiates between the needs of the content authors and deliverable consu

you can truly customize the output deliverables to meet the needs of various audiences. The first step is to a

specializations supported by the DITA Technical Committee (TC) to provide more structure for authors when cre

common content types. By utilizing these specializations, you make it easier for authors to create consistent inform

and maintain a standards-based architecture that supports interchange with other teams or organizations.

The next step is to create specializations to meet the specific needs of your organization, industry, or users. Ther

different types of specializations:

Topic information type specializations, such as glossary or API reference, which provide a standard structu

authoring specific types of information.

Deliverable specializations, such as bookmap, which provide a consistent structure and metadata optimize

a particular deliverable type.

Domain-specific semantic and structural specialization, such as semiconductor design documents, lea

materials, policy and procedure documents, and financial documents, which have standard structures withi

domain or industry.



As more industries embrace standards for increased quality and reliability, specialization can provide structur

meeting the standards as well as provide a mechanism for thought leadership.

The following figure shows how task, concept, and reference topics are specialized from the main topic type and

you can specialize directly from the main topic type or from any of the other specializations.

Figure 5. Specializations

Once you specialize to specify semantic values, you can customize the content processing to leverage addit

semantics. For example, once an insurance company team has created specialized markup for the provider of a p

they can quickly create summary tables of policy claims, arranged according to provider.

In addition to providing consistency and control for content authoring and publishing, you can initiate disci

specific quality initiatives, such as task analysis for technical documents, or training or use case developme

engineering. These types of process maturity activities also include identifying all the stakeholders in the co

creation and generation processes and providing appropriate, customized authoring and editing experiences for

stakeholder role. For example, if the team has a mix of professional content developers and subject matter expertcollaboratively author content, you can tailor the authoring environments to meet the teams various needs. For exa

the subject matter experts may need a subset of the functionality required by the professional content creators.

Creating more standard, well-formed information at this third level of adoption provides a basis for improving qualit

consistency across the content set.



DITA features used


Specialization for different authoring needs/audiencesSpecialization allows you to extend or evolve the DITA specification to create domain-specific or structure-sp

content types. You can apply specialization at both the topic and map levels.

Modular processing architecture for shared infrastructure

Even as specializations create new markup, they can continue sharing processing logic and applications

unspecialized or differently specialized content. DITAs processing architecture allows for easy extension

customization by adding, removing, or overriding specific modules in a processing chain.

Level 4: Automation and integration

Once content is specialized, you can leverage your investment in semantics with automation of key processes

begin tying content togethereven across different specializations or authoring disciplines. For example, you can

common content across marketing and training, or share common processes and infrastructure throughout your co

life cycle.

Scenario

The software division of a large technology company stores their content in a CMS, which allows all the teams i

division to reuse the content. At this level, they have moved beyond single-sourcing of content and achieved

way reuse. Product descriptions created by the marketing team can be reused by the technical publications gro

create product overviews, and by the training group to create product tours. At the same time, product archite

specifications created by technical publications can be reused by training, technical support groups, an

marketing team.

The following figure illustrates how content created by different teams can be reused in multiple deliverables by mu

teams across the division.

Figure 6: Content reuse across teams



Reusing its content across the teams in the division, the company can save a significant amount of money by trans

the content source rather than each deliverable that instantiates the content.

Investment

Organizations need a CMS to effectively control and automate the content development life cycle. In addition to s

content and providing versioning control, the CMS provides workflow automation support that assists authors in cre

reusing, and publishing. However, the investment in implementing a CMS is non-trivial in terms of preparation and

In preparation for a CMS implementation, you must understand the structure of the content and where it is appro

for reuse. This requires a significant amount of research, planning, and coordination to identify the reuse possibi

requirements, and standards across disciplines. In addition, you need to define a robust metadata model to suppo

content model and apply it to all topics. Lastly, you must have agreed-upon content development processes in

to automate them with workflow control. This requires consensus and support from all stakeholders in the conten

cycle. The cost for implementing the CMS includes the following items:

Price of the CMS software

Hardware to run it and store the content

Resource time to prepare and plan for implementation

Resources to customize and maintain the CMS

Resource time for training stakeholders to use it

Although such an undertaking may seem daunting, the initial implementation is a one-time cost but the improvem

in speed and efficiency will allow you to recoup the investment in a minimal amount of time.

A translation management system is another key automation and integration investment to manage and auto

content localization. If you are translating content into more than one language, you must have processes in pla

handle this additional work. A translation management system provides automated process management for trans

content and integrates into the CMS workflow support.

To implement a translation management system, you must have a defined translation process that can scale to

your localization needs as they increase, and you must understand the requirements for a scalable system. In add

you must build your translation memory, which is the library of localized content.

Return

The return on investment in a CMS is the ability to reuse content across disciplines and automate the co

development workflow. If content is not stored in a repository that provides easy retrieval through metadata, it w

impossible to reuse content across teams. In addition to obvious characteristics such as automated status ch

notification and reporting, workflow support enables you to see quickly what information is reused in which topics

crucial feature of this fourth level of adoption enables true reuse and mitigates the risk of inadvertently propag

change throughout the content set.



The following figure shows how users can share content stored in multiple repositories.

Figure 7: Multiple users sharing content from multiple repositories

Traditional publishing and translation processes involve sending each deliverable out for translation. Althoug

can leverage the translation memory for the content in each deliverable, the translation vendor must compare

deliverable to the translation memory to determine what content is new and what needs to be translated. If you

multiple deliverables with the same content, you pay for each analysis pass. If you have multiple deliverables

similar but non-identical information, you pay for the analysis pass, as well as the cost to translate each version

information. Organizations that produce multi-language documentation can incur large, unnecessary costs if they

to multiply the number of languages by the number of versions of the content for each release.

In contrast, because DITA is an XML topic-based architecture, you send only the source topics that contain cha

content to the translation vendor. This means that you can control the content in smaller units, and thus the am

of content the vendor analyzes for each language is significantly reduced. In addition, if you are reusing content r

than rewriting multiple versions of it, you simply pay to translate the original source instead of multiple versions

same information. Content that is translated at the source rather than at the level of each deliverable, radically cha

the translation cost structure. The ability to translate content at the source, combined with the ability to identify cha

content and thereby reduce the actual amount of content by reuse, gives you greater control over the translation pr

and your overall localization costs.

By automating workflow support with a CMS and integrating the translation process, you can reuse content

confidence across teams and realize significant savings when localizing to multiple languages.

DITA features used


Metadata

DITA provides some basic metadata attributes for all topics, including author, audience, resource ID, keywords

index markers. Maps also have default metadata, including copyright information and critical dates. Howev

specializations provide additional, deliverable-specific attributes. For example, the bookmap specialization inc

book-specific metadata including book identification numbers and publication data.



Translation and language attributes

DITA provides the translate and xml:lang attributes to support localization. The translate attribute indicates wh

the content of the element should be translated or not.4 The xml:lang attribute identifies the language into whic

content should be translated. You can specify these attributes at the element, topic, or map level.

Generalization for cross-specialization reuse

When reuse happens across different content types, issues of cross-type validation can quickly result: some o

semantics in the source may not be valid in the context of reuse. For example, a is allowed in a task topi

not in a concept topic. But since a is just a specialized type of list item (), you can reuse a any

where a is allowed by stripping away the extra semantics that do not apply in the new context. In this way, yo

reuse the content of a between tasks and concepts, even if the specialized semantics and structure only

in the source type.

Level 5: Semantics on demand

As DITA diversifies to occupy more roles within an organization, single-application solutions can no longer provid

specialized support each author or product may require. Instead, a cross-application, cross-silo strategy that s

DITA as a common semantic currency lets groups use the toolset most appropriate for their content authoring

management needs, while sharing content and even moving authoring responsibility between groups throughou

content life cycle. Beyond automation of known processes, we now have the flexibility to combine new application

sources of content as needed, providing processing flexibility and an adaptable, evolutionary content strategy.

Scenario

A financial services company can integrate financial data from a trusted source with quarterly report text and pr

marketing overviews written in DITA to create different combinations of year-in-review content for employees v

investors. They can also use DITA to create subscribable feeds for news and updates about specific products

investment tips or news items that match an individual investors portfolio or profile.

Investment

There are several major investments needed to reach this level. First, content applications need to be enab

integrate not just with particular peer applications, but with any peer application that can provide and consume

topics and maps. This goes beyond existing DITA content applications and becomes a strategy that covers every s

of semantic data or content: DITA becomes the common currency between semantic applications. Data can be exp

as DITA maps; structured or semi-structured content can be exposed as DITA topics at various levels of specializ

and unstructured content such as PDFs, images, or multimedia files can be wrapped using DITA maps to prov

common interface for associating and storing titles, descriptions, and metadata.

Every application that authors, manages, relates, consumes, or publishes content becomes a service that provides

content as subscribable feeds. Unlike traditional RSS feeds, DITA feeds have scalable semantic bandwidth: they

applications with different levels of semantic understanding to continue sharing content. This is accomplished thr

common agreement on a content currency or language that itself maintains multiple levels of semantics.

Second, an organization needs ways to organize and retrieve these newly consumable sources of DITA content, w

means, at a minimum, some basic taxonomies for subject area or product, and potentially a full suite of taxonom

serve both internal and external audiences, including values for audience, platform, activity, required skills, and s

These values allow the rapid retrieval and organization of discovered content into task-specific or role-specific asse

example, a cross-product installation and orientation guide for a new customer, or a customized set of learning ma

for a new employee given the role of administrator for three unfamiliar products.

4 DITA Version 1.1 Architectural Specification



DITA content services and taxonomies work together to provide a standardized level of semantic interchange a

any enabled application, moving the focus from integrating proprietary application APIs to providing general co

exchange services based on the DITA schemas and other standards such as Atom5 and Representational State Tra

(REST)6

. The result is an application ecosystem as diverse and interoperable as the content ecosystem it supwhich can be quickly extended or adapted by adding or replacing components to meet evolving content managem

delivery needs.

Return

One of the most immediate and visible returns on investment at this fifth level of adoption is the ability to dynam

personalize content: putting the power of DITA metadata, topics, and map-based publishing into the hands o

audience. When we make data and content available as DITA, it can be integrated and republished using

pipelines and services: for example, creating custom PDFs that include indexes and tables of key figures. Whe

wrap unstructured content using DITA maps, we create a single interface for finding, retrieving, and mashing tog

any online resource in the organization: for example, tying company financial data into quarterly reports, along

comparative stock performance and industry news feeds.

The following figure shows content wrapped in DITA maps being used in multiple outputs.

Figure 8: Dynamically instantiating and publishing

All of this is possible without DITA, of course: dynamic personalization, mashups, and data and content integ

have many examples outside the realm of DITA. What DITA offers, however, is a way to gain dividends from

investment by making content and services shareable not just within a repository, or between a specific repository

its consuming applications, but across any and all repositories and services that use or can provide a common u

content and metadata: DITA topics and maps.

5 http://www.mnot.net/drafts/draft-nottingham-atom-format-02.html

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST



DITA features used


DITA feedsFeeds of DITA content allow reusers to subscribe to particular topics or maps, receiving automatic notifications w

the source is updated. The feed can provide standard abstracts and metadata to simplify search and retrieval a

multiple repositories.

Generated DITA for semantic interchange

Content from other structured sources such as databases or other XML standards, or even semi-structured content

as wiki pages, can be exposed as DITA topics of varying types. The generated DITA view of these different inform

sources provides a common integration point for different types of content, allowing the exchange of structured or

structured content across format boundaries without loss of underlying semantics. For example, a wiki how-to a

type could provide a DITA task form that allows the wiki page to be reused in support portals or policy manuals.

DITA wrappers for non-DITA content

Even unstructured or binary content, such as word-processing files or multimedia, can be described in DITA terms

a map that assigns a DITA title, short description, and metadata, making unstructured content in a common repo

as searchable and retrievable as the DITA content it sits alongside.

Specialized elements for data integration

DITA provides special elements such as and that are designed to integrate data from struc

sources such as databases or other XML sources. By specializing these elements, a DITA architect can c

integration points between DITA and data sources that provide semantics and validation around where and ho

data is included. For example, a specialization for financial reports could include standard elements for selecting

formatting earnings information.

Dynamic content

As DITA content becomes subscribable and mashable with other types of content, new dynamic capabilities be

available: Web sites can be personalized, users can construct their own manuals, and information delivery bec

dynamic, automatically incorporating new topics or changes to topics. For example, a user could create a custom

guide that includes a mix of Web articles, restaurant recommendations, and subscribed travel alerts that cou

downloaded to their phone and automatically updated as the original DITA sources change.

Level 6: Universal semantic ecosystem

As DITA provides for scalable semantic bandwidth across content silos and applications, a new kind of sem

ecosystem emerges: semantics that can move with content across old boundaries, wrap unstructured content

provide validated integration with semi-structured content and managed data sources. DITA becomes the sem

interchange standard for cross-organization, cross-standard, universal content use.

Scenario

Companies that can share all their information across company boundaries allow new partnerships. For exam

publishing company can incorporate data from real product specifications into articles about the product; governm

can combine information from any level of government thats relevant to a particular citizens problem; applicable

precedents can be attached to contentious insurance claims...the list is endless because all the information ca

used where it is needed.

The following figure indicates how organizations that make the move to DITA become part of a sem

ecosystem that enables information sharing and collaboration where and when it s required, without expe

infrastructure negotiations.



Figure 9: Unified Semantic Ecosystem

Investment

The greatest investment at this level is in the following efforts:

Propagating a pervasive change of mind set across an organization and its partners.

Recognizing the value of standardization and collaboration.

Establishing common goals and processes, not only for current sharing of infrastructure and content, b

a foundation for the ongoing evolution of people, processes, and technologies that can take advantage of

partnership opportunities as they emerge, bypassing many of the traditional barriers to organizational chang

process improvement.

Return

Traditional knowledge management depends on the consolidation of knowledge resources and processes into

tightly integrated applications and repositories. In other words, the challenge of cross-silo knowledge flows is typ

managed by creating bigger silos. This approach is problematic even within an enterprise where differing know

needs can drive dif ferences in tool choice and content architecture. The approach is almost impossible to scale a

multiple enterprises: even if you could convince everyone within an organization to converge on a single repositor

tool platform, it would be nearly impossible to convince business partners and collaborators to discard their ex

investments for the sake of returns on a minority of content shared across organizations.

A universal semantic ecosystem replaces this notion of monolithic, proprietary silos with an adaptable netwo

applications that can share content and integrate processes wherever organizational agreements allow or req

Because the connections are based on open content standards rather than on proprietary APIs, different parts o



network can provide radically different kinds of services without breaking agreements on shared content and meta

The network as a whole can evolve asynchronously at this sixth level of adoption. Each part meets local needs w

compromising global interoperability, and enables a radical change in how change itself happens: from crisis-d

revolutionary upheavals to evolutionary, incremental, adaptive growth in which the best ideas and applicationshared and propagated freely without requiring wholesale replacement of systems and processes.

Summary

DITA is a flexible, scalable architecture that can provide process and content improvement at each maturity level

a minimum of investment, you can start to realize the benefits of authoring in XML topics. As your organizations n

increase in sophistication and complexity, you can more fully implement DITA to support your dynamic content v

See Table 1 DITA Maturity Modelreference for an overview.

Feedback

This document is intended to provide information about adopting DITA using a graduated approach. The DITA Ma

Model is the first and only such contribution of its kind and is intended to be a living document that will evolve ovethrough application of the concepts herein and direct feedback from the community.

Please submit your comments and feedback to: [email protected]

Biographies

Amber Swope is a Principal Consultant at JustSystems, where she applies her information architecture and DITA experience to help clients address

business challenges.

Ambers experience as information architect spans almost 20 years in the information development field and encompasses her work with

throughout the full information development lifecycle, authoring numerous papers and articles, and presentation at leading industry conferences.

holds a Masters in Technical and Professional Writing.

Michael Priestley is the lead DITA architect for IBM, and co-editor of the OASIS DITA 1.0 and 1.1 specifications. He is an experienced infor

architect and XML architect, and has presented and published prolifically on information development processes, information design principle

development techniques, structured authoring and Web 2.0, and of course DITA. He is currently supporting new DITA projects and working on DITA



DITA Maturity Model referenceThe following table provides an overview of the maturity levels and key adoption points.

Table 1: DITA Maturity Model reference

Level Scope Key DITA Features Reuse Strategy People Process Tools

1 DITA topics Individual Nested DITA

topics

Cross-reference

elements

Conditional

processing acrosssingle structurefor all outputs/variants

Basic editing

skillsPreserve existing

processesWYSIWYG ed

File or sourc

control syste

Editor-based

publishing

2 DITA maps Team DITA maps

conref

conditions

Reuse of topics

through mapsfor managingmultipledeliverables/product variants

Reuse of

elements throughconref forcommon/volatilecontent

Conditional

processing forremainder

Team-level

coordination

Map editing skills

Reuse planning

skills

Reuse process

Configuration

management

Component

contentmanagement

Map editor

Version cont

system

Scriptable to

3 Specializationandcustomization

Productfamily

Specialization

for differentauthoring needs/audiences

Modular

processingarchitecturefor sharedinfrastructure

Repurposing

content withmultipleprocesses

Sharing design

modules throughspecialization

Sharing

processingmodules

Content analysis

skills

DITA

specializationskills

XSL/XSL:FO skills

Content

authoring skills

Information

architecture skills

Content model

guidelines

Content type

authoringguidelines

Map authoring

guidelines

Style guidelines

Coding guidelines

Specialization

policies

Quality initiatives

(structuralconsistency, taskanalysis...)

Specializatio

aware or speeditors

Differentiate

editingenvironmentfor differentauthoring ne

Component

content

managemensystem

Extensible to

Customized

processing

4 Automation andintegration

Brand Metadata

Translation

and languageattributes

Generalization

for cross-specializationreuse

Single-sourcing

machine-readable andhuman-readable(like literateprogramming)

Reuse across

specializationsfor differentdisciplines/subjects

Reuse of trusted

source content(for exampleproduct namelists)

Componentized

reuse withmetadata-drivenintegration

Cross-product

and cross-disciplinecoordination/councils

Awareness

of relateddisciplinescontent

Content strategy

skills

Globalization

skills

Cross-discipline

content strategy

Topic-based

translationprocess

Cross-discipline

reuse planningand coordination

Metadata

management/

controlledmetadata values

Automated review

and approvalworkflows

Globalization

policies

Requirements

management

Diversified e

solutions

Translation

services

Enterprise

contentmanagemensystem withautomatedworkflow

Automated

metadata-drbuilds

Requiremen

traceability


20/20

Level Scope Key DITA Features Reuse Strategy People Process Tools

5 Semantics ondemand

Enterprise DITA feeds

DITA wrappers for

non-DITA content

Generated DITA

for semanticinterchange

Specialized

elements for dataintegration

Dynamic content

Reuse on-

demand/dynamicreuse

Personalization

on-demand/dynamicpersonalization

Semantic content

as a service(subscribableDITA feedsfor approvedcontent)

Reuse/integration

of data sourcesinto documentcontexts

Aggregation and

validation of DITAand non-DITA

sources usingmap wrappersand generatedDITA

Reuse across

multiplerepositories

Web development

skills

Taxonomy

developmentskills

Developer

coordinationacross products/

disciplines

Collaboration

strategy

Mashup strategy

Semantic Web

strategy

Taxonomy/

ontologymanagement

Application

developmentstrategy (DITAas a commoncurrency)

Portable content

strategy (useappropriaterepository foractivities ofcontent in currentphase)

Web-based

embedded Dediting/wikis

DITA genera

wrapping

Multiple

integratedrepositories

Dynamic con

personalizatserver

DITA servers

feeds

DITA mashu

Standards-b

loosely coupapplicationintegrationusing DITA

as a commocurrency

6 Universalsemanticecosystem

Universe Drive evolution

of new DITAcapabilities

Cross-silo and

cross-applicationknowledgemanagement

Continual

improvement

Sharing best

practices

Standards

definition andconsortiumformation

Continuous

improvementSituational

applicationsmashups

Universal co

managemenframework

The opinions, solutions, and advice in this article are from the experiences of Michael Priestley and Amber Swope and are not intended to rep

official communication from IBM or JustSys tems, or an endorsement of any products. Michael Priestley, Amber Swope, IBM or JustSys tems are no

for any of the contents in this article. The accuracy of the information in this article is based on Michael Priestleys and Amber Swopes knowledge

time of writing.

About JustSystems

JustSystems is a leading global software

provider with three decades of successful

innovat ion in off ice product ivity,

information management, and consumer

and enterprise software. With over 2,500

customers worldwide, the company is

continuing a global expansion strategy

based on its xfy enterprise software,

XMetaL content lifecycle solutions,

and its pioneering work in enabling

XBRL financial reporting technologies.

JustSystems is one of the 2008 KMWorld

100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge

Management, a 2008 EContent 100

member, and was recognized on the

2008 KMWorld Trend-Setting Product list

for XMetaL. Major strategic partnerships

include IBM, Oracle and EMC.

Copyright JustSystems

All rights reserved. JustSystems, the

JustSystems logo, and xfy are trademarks

or registered trademarks of JustSystems

Corporation in the United States and

other countries. XMetaL is a trademark

of JustSystems Canada, Inc in the United

States and other countries. Other company,

product and service names may be

trademarks or service marks of others.

http://www.justsystems.com

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+1.866.793.1542

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International: +1.604.697.8705

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